Pamyat, Israel and Soviet Jews

One ugly aspect of the Soviet Union’s greater toleration of political pluralism has been the emergence of far-right groups whose stock in trade is hatemongering and fomenting ethnic strife. Perhaps the most notorious of these is Pamyat, a Great Russian nationalistic movement whose anti-Semitic advocacy evokes chilling reminders of Russia’s recent past. Now, reports a Soviet weekly, the Moscow prosecutor’s office has begun proceedings against Pamyat under a section of the criminal code that forbids agitating to restrict the rights of others. The case, if it’s pursued, could provide a key test of how minority rights will be protected in the new Soviet Union.

Tens of thousands of Soviet Jews, however, don’t want to wait for the results of that test. Instead, they want out, and quickly, a desire strengthened by recent violence and threats directed against Jews in Moscow and other major cities. The natural destination for these people is Israel, which is eager to welcome them. But flights out of Moscow are booked through next fall and the Soviets, yielding to Arab pressure, now refuse to ratify an agreement for direct air links between Moscow and Tel Aviv. It should be noted that Arab pressures increased markedly after Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir let go with some loose talk that seemed to suggest new immigrants might soon be flooding into the occupied West Bank.

History forbids ignoring anti-Semitic threats from Pamyat, or dismissing the rising sense of foreboding among Soviet Jews. In the uncertain Soviet political climate, accelerated Jewish emigration should be facilitated to the maximum extent possible. But the agitated political climate in and around Israel must also be taken into account.

The U.S. position has long been that moving Israelis onto the West Bank--including new Soviet immigrants--undercuts opportunities to negotiate any Israeli-Palestinian political accord. This is the correct position to take. Possibilities do exist for speeding up the flow of Jewish emigrants from the Soviet Union, and certainly there are places in Israel proper where they could be housed. Those prospects might be helped along considerably if the Israeli government would make unequivocally clear that new immigrants would not be settled on the West Bank.